The PV-DV953 is good value for the money. The GS100 is even better, and the next jump would be to a GL2 or a PDX10. What type of shooting are you planning on doing? If you tell us this then the members could more easily suggest something.

I own a trv950 well the minumum lux setting is not the best which is around 6 or so but it is a nice little cam for me. Try some hacking, pump up the illumination of the scene and step up(higher f stop) with the aperture. The image (from my tests) turns out to be smoother than from an average preset of exposure and normal lighting. Also a big plus on doing that is the great density of the (want to say negative) of the footage, the contrast is a lot higher(depends on the lighting again) which is one part of making an image film-like. So back to the start i think it is very possible ( if the lighting is present) to be able to use trv950 in a very productive pro"ish" way. It is very smooth i think the footage out of the cam is very much acceptable for Dvinfo audience of course, for the rest it is hd. Though at this point i am wanting to upgrade to something 24p as you will find out the deinterlacing step is never 100% true and in result of that the resolution crumbles. One way of going around is doing a multi process deinterlacing with different filters and applications which is close than your regular DVfilm maker. Oh yeah and your argument was 950 vs 953, in my amateur opinion size of the ccd chip is a bit important and i would go with a trv950. Good luck with your buy.

The TRV950 is rated at 7 lux and the DV953 at 15 lux. That is 1 F-stop or 6 db of gain. To gauge what that means in reality, look at this site. (BTW 1 FC=10 Lux) If you are making a film and are shooting only natural light, this might make a difference to you. But, I suspect most filmmakers will use a higher light level, 3 point lighting, and simulate a dark look with filters or manual adjustments. Look at the other camera features like touch screen vs. buttons/jog dial. What can be manually adjusted on each camera. The availability of accessory mics, lenses, XLR adapters, etc. for the type of shooting you plan to do. Right now, there is about $900 difference in price between these two cameras with the Dv953 being cheaper. You can buy an awful lot of accessories for that money.

All I can say is, I love the image from my 953 when I feed it enough light. The colors are good, the Leica lens resolves 570 lines (per Panasonic specs), lots of good manual adjustments, 16:9 (horizontal sqeeze) and letterbox (cropped) modes, frame mode at 30P, built in flash for stills, and the list goes on and on. I bought it at full retail when it first hit the shelves and I have never regretted it.

I have no experience with the Sony but there have been numerous comparisons of the two over the past year. Do a Google search and see what comes up.

regards,

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